This Swedish kid is more dedicated to fixing climate change than anyone you know

It’s Thursday, October 4, and this Swedish kid is more dedicated to fixing climate change than anyone you know.

Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old student, has been protesting on Sweden’s parliament steps every week for more than a month. Her teachers and parents think she should be in school, but the teen is concerned with more pressing matters than geometry and history: namely, climate change. She’s on strike because she believes her country’s government hasn’t done enough to tackle rising temperatures.

Thunberg has been diagnosed with autism, and she says the condition gives her a unique perspective on how to fix a broken system. “It’s very common that people on the autism spectrum have a special interest,” she told the New Yorker’s Masha Gessen.

Thunberg’s passion for the environment was first sparked in the third grade. “They were always talking about how we should turn off lights, save water, not throw out food,” she said. “I asked why, and they explained about climate change. And I thought this was very strange. If humans could really change the climate, everyone would be talking about it and people wouldn’t be talking about anything else.”

It’s pretty weird that global warming wasn’t a part of the conversation leading up to Sweden’s general election last month, Gessen’s piece points out, especially because climate-fueled wildfires and heat waves swept through parts of the country just a couple months earlier.

Sweden has been able to grow its economy while cutting emissions 26 percent in the past few decades, no small feat. But Thunberg thinks it could do more. In an article titled “Sweden is not a role model,” she argues that governments aren’t thinking past the year 2050. “By then I will, in the best case, not even have lived half my life,” she wrote. “What happens next?”

Hopefully, young activists like Thunberg will soon force their governments to take drastic steps to address rising temperatures. According to Gessen, she’s on her way: Thunberg “is a household name, and climate change is a topic of daily conversation.” Way to go, kid!

The Smog

Need-to-know basis

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